Luther Cressman was Oregon’s real-life Indiana Jones (Part 1 of 2)
IN THE SUMMER of 1981 a little action-adventure movie titled Raiders of the Lost Ark came out, and fans have been speculating ever since on...
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Offbeat Oregon History podcast
A daily (5-day-a-week) podcast feed of true Oregon stories -- of heroes and rascals, of shipwrecks and lost gold. Stories of shanghaied sailors and Skid Road bordellos and pirates and robber...
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20 of 297 episodes
Radical Wobblies found support among loggers
Industrial Workers of the World union grew strong in the woods just before the First World War broke out — and the U.S. Army had to teach so...
Shipwrecked fur traders walked from Oregon Coast to Louisiana
While they were ashore, their sailing ship sank in a storm, leaving four fur traders alone in a vast wilderness with no prospects for rescue...
P-town ‘jitney wars’ were monopoly vs. small-biz
Regular motorists would swing by streetcar stops and offer to take passengers faster and in greater comfort for the same nickel. But the com...
Dog's 2,500-mile walk home made Silverton famous
THE TRAVELERS were almost to their destination in Indiana, about 2,300 miles into their road trip, when it happened: Frank was gassing up th...
Bobbie the Wonder Dog put Silverton on the map
BOBBIE THE WONDER Dog, a.k.a. Silverton Bobbie, is still today Silverton’s most famous celebrity. And that’s saying something; the town has...
SPADs, Sopwith Camels made with Oregon spruce
The famous First World War aircraft were made of spruce, and one of the most important sources of the strategic wood for the Allies was the...
Oregon back country is rich in legends of buried treasure
Stories of lost loot and buried booty have kept treasure hunters busy digging for gold in hidden corners of Oregon for the past 150 years. S...
Decade-long dam dispute resolved with dynamite
IN THE SMALL hours of the morning of Aug. 16, 1906, a powerful explosion jolted residents awake near the little town of Willamette, which to...
Buying gas-station B-17 was a crazy adventure
Before he made it back, Art Lacey had survived a plane crash, bribed a fire department with illegal whiskey, kited a big check and made bitt...
Mislabeled wood alcohol killed 28 Portland hobos
The alcoholic derelicts of on Burnside Street knew they could count on denatured alcohol for a cheap-but-nasty buzz; it might make them sick...
Family camped unnoticed in downtown Portland — for 4 years
Why is there 5,000 acres of near-wilderness at the heart of Oregon's largest city? Because nobody could develop it — although many tried. So...
Six iconic food items that were invented in Oregon (Part 2 of 2)
Today we're finishing up our list of six of the most iconic modern foods that have been invented in the Beaver State. Last time, we explored...
Six iconic food items that were invented in Oregon (Part 1 of 2)
Oregon has been the birthplace of some of the world's most iconic foods over the years. Today and tomorrow, on the podcast, we'll explore si...
Express clerk’s silence foiled Eugene train robber
The masked outlaw planned the job out carefully, and thought he was ready for anything. But he met his match in the cool-handed express man,...
All-metal steam-powered zeppelin: Could it work?
If so, the Linn County lad might have revolutionized air travel. But a launch-day disaster ruined his prototype, the Great Depression scared...
Alsea lad became ‘The Nikola Tesla of Oregon’
Thomas B. Slate first invented the commercial production process for making dry ice, then took his new-made fortune and used it to re-imagin...
I-25 submarine gave Oregon its first wartime bombardment
The big sub was a key part of Oregon history; it fired on Battery Russell in June 1942, tried to light a forest fire with its on-board airpl...
Japanese sub blasted its way into Oregon history
IN LATE AUGUST 1943, the crew of the destroyer U.S.S. Patterson scrambled to battle stations off the coast of what is now Vanatu, near Austr...
Japanese shipwrecks on coast predate Columbus
The case of John Ottoson (ne Otokichi) in 1832 illustrates what can happen: Blown off to sea by a gale, he and his comrades rode the Kuroshi...